


Hidden in plain sight

by WhoCaresAboutANameAnyway



Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:27:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoCaresAboutANameAnyway/pseuds/WhoCaresAboutANameAnyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They have been here much longer than people think, blending truth and fiction so their existence remained as mere tale for children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden in plain sight

**Author's Note:**

> When I joked telling my friend that Jane Eyre was the first Black Widow in history (because she was locked in the red room in Mrs. Reed house) he dared me to write this, and this was the result.

Nowadays there's people who believe in ghost stories. They still pay borrowed money to fortune tellers so they can be lied to.

 

Today people still want to be deceived. They want to believe in petty things like love, justice, or ghosts.

 

But no one believes in The Red Room. Who would want to? They would want to protect their children behind bars, and then The Red Room wouldn't have fresh blood to corrupt. Wouldn't have soldiers.

 

I bear the blame for that, reader, I'm ashamed to admit. I helped them hide it away between the pages of a fairy tale. I'm just a cog of their gear, but in the end that's all it takes, isn't it, reader? A misplaced cog to make the motor break into a million pieces.

 

My tale doesn't begin with a wicked stepmother nor with a foe that kidnapped me in the middle of the night. It was my aunt who freely gave me away to Mr Brockleshurst in exchange for a month's paycheck, an errand boy then. 

 

Years ago, almost a lifetime ago, I heard about her death. Despite all my years of training, I wasn't fast enough. By the time I got there she was already rooting six feet under. I remember kneeling into the ground, not caring about dirtying my dress, and caressing her tombstone with my nails until they bled. I made a fist of my hand and brought it to my chest, barely noticing the blood sliding down my elbows. I remember looking at her name, now tainted with Red angry blood. My blood. I could use euphemisms like revenge or poetic justice, but what I felt was vindication. She had it coming. I felt happy. Another part of me felt sorrow. After all her dedication, I'd have liked to show her my new skill set, in detail.

 

Back at the beginning, I remember vividly my travel with Mr. Brockleshurst. He was a weary man with slumped shoulders, and quiet. I didn't stop asking where were we going, what was going to happen. I didn't stop asking him to help me. But he wouldn't talk. He looked at me with distaste, that only now, with the gruesome perspective that life has given me, I think it was pity. We traveled for three days.

 

When I stepped out of the carriage a boy a few years older than me greeted me. He introduced himself as Edward Rochester, and I did as Jane Eyre.

 

"Where are we?" I asked.

  
"People call it Lowood. We call it the Red Room." Behind him there's a woman of savage appearance. She has wild curls and a dangerous glint in her eyes. She's dressed in men trousers and when I come closer she seized my arm violently. 

 

"On the weak side, but nothing we can't mold. Welcome to your new home." Later I learnt that her name was Bertha Mason, and that she barely left Rochester side.

 

That's how my story begins, the vixen of my aunt sent me to the Red Room, where I faced ghosts, punishments and knowledge. It was then when I made the greatest mistake of my life. I made a friend. Her name was Helen Burns, or how they called her, Asset 13.

 

The first thing they teach you, is that you must trust no one. The second one, is that they could take everything you love from you at any given moment. So they economized their lessons. They made us fight between us. They made me kill my best friend... No, that's not true. Helen let me live. She was a couple of years older than me but a lot more warier of the world. She took me under her wing right away, she gave me half of her meal the days my stomach couldn't stop growling and she took the fallout for my mistakes. She protected me until the very end.

 

"You could have warned me!" I shouted to Rochester while they took me away from Helen. He was a good handler, a better lover and the worst kind of human being.

  
"What would have been the point of training then, Janet?"

 

"She was weak anyway." Bertha Mason added, looking out of a window and I got angry. After that I passed a year in prison, for showing her first hand what she taught me to do. What she taught me to be. Not even the Red Room could hold me then. I had a cell mate. She said that she was a writer without a story to tell and I was just so angry.

 

When they came to retrieve me, Charlotte grabbed my arm, looked at me dead in the eye and asked me if there ever was a hint of truth in my words. I stared right back at her and did what I was trained to do. Lie.

 

"No." 

 

"Go now or I'll leave you to root here." Said Grace Poole, my gaoler at the time, and giving one last look at my cell mate, who was looking at me with intelligence behind her eyes, I went away. I went back _home_.

 

The next years passed in a blur of training and missions. Eventually, they brought in a German scientist who improved us. They called it natural selection, I called it slaughter. Only six of us survived the serum.

 

  
Around us people moved on with their lives, the trainers retired and some handlers were retired. Even Rochester, whom I learnt to tolerate, was replaced by someone else. He wasn't like the others, not back then, he had a metal arm and hunted eyes, he didn't belong here.

 

Drakov's Daughter, Sao Paulo, the hospital fire... Even monsters like us have a breaking point, and I hit mine many years ago. I got out only to run into the arms of the enemy. Quite literally.

  
My target, Clint Barton, has me in a headlock that I easily break, I push him out the way and shot my partner, asset 25. She wasn't my friend. I didn't know her but I can imagine the kind of life she's had. While I debate whether to feel sorrow or not, I feel I pinch on the neck and the world goes black.

 

Pain and white walls. _Great, I'm in medical again_. That was the first thing that came into my mind. The second one is that I'm not alone, the smug bastard with the weird bow kink is here. He looks nothing like Edward Rochester, his eyes are kinder. He doesn't look like The Soldier either, he's softer around the edges. He should be looking at me with fear in his eyes but he doesn't. He looks at me like as if I were a person.

 

"Why am I still alive?"

  
"Because I made another call, Miss Romanoff."

 

I used to be Jane, my lover called me Janet, they named me asset 23 and once I finished my training I earned to be Natalya. Now I choose to be Natasha.


End file.
